


Uncomfortable Truths

by retrojupiter



Series: Interludes [3]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Loss, death watch childhood was Not Ok for din, din thinks about his childhood but not really cos hes repressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/retrojupiter/pseuds/retrojupiter
Summary: How do you even describe growing up as a Mandalorian foundling? Apparently not very well if you're Din.(Din and Cara have a conversation about what a childhood should look like)
Series: Interludes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007094
Comments: 22
Kudos: 172





	Uncomfortable Truths

“So you were what - a child soldier?” 

“No, I...We all were.” 

They were sat, backs against the Crest, watching the sun dip below the horizon. A case of beer between them, more depleted by Cara, Din only managing enough up his straw to take the edge off. 

“'We all were’ sounds an awful lot like a child army, buddy.” Cara took a sip of her drink, looking over. 

Din could only see her profile in the dying light, enough to see the unease on her face. “Once they took me in, it was all about making me strong. Not to fight anybody, more to be able _to_ fight. I was grateful, really. To be strong.”

He rarely spoke this much, and not ever about this.

“A child? Strong? Gods Din, you shouldn’t have to be strong at - how old were you?”

“Eight.”

“...Fuck.”

It had never seemed that odd to him; just the way things were. But, now he had the child, it made something burn sour in his gut to imagine the kid being trained as he had been in...however many years. _Like he’d even live to see it._

“It just seems,” Cara reached for another beer, “Like you didn’t have a choice.”

Din tilted his head at her, trying to take a non-obnoxious sip of his drink. 

She looked at him, probably trying to make eye contact. She was about an inch too high. “They saved you from your village, sure, and then trained you for the Creed. Did they ever give you a choice about whether you wanted to train?”

He hadn’t thought about it like that. 

“I...didn’t have many other options. My family was dead. I had no other relatives. I could either stay with the Mandalorians or I could be placed in an orphanage. And we both know those orphanages sold children to the Empire.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. But I mean after as well, when you swore the Creed, did you have a choice then? Could you have chosen to leave?”

Din had thought about leaving - _running -_ when he was a teenager. Sick of getting his ass beaten, desperate to prove himself, he’d planned to steal a ship and take off. Looking back he knew he would have died within a week, but the idealism of youth had done wonders for his confidence. In the end, he hadn’t had the guts to go through with it. 

_Hut’uun._

“Yes. If the Way isn’t right for someone, they can leave. But it would have meant leaving my new family, my first clan. I was never adopted but-”

_Fuck, why did he say that, what was she going to think-_

Cara stared at him in shock. “You were never adopted? They took you in but never gave you another family, just trained you. And you were _eight?”_

_They took you from a warzone and taught you how to kill?_

Mostly, it had been his choice. Some part of him had hardened and died in that bunker, and learning how to kill those responsible had seemed like the best way forward. It really wasn’t the fault of the Mandalorians that he hadn’t wanted a family. At least, not parents. 

He had parents. They were dead. 

One of the clans had taken him in and trained him, so he had _vode,_ but not _buir’e._ If he was honest, it hadn’t made much of a difference to him - he trained, ate, and slept with his _vode_ most of the time, and the other times when they had breaks from training, he was alone instead. If anything, it had prepared him for being alone as a bounty hunter for months at a time. 

“Family doesn’t have to mean parents.” _A safe answer._ “I had brothers, and we spent most of our time together anyway - I was looked after, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Except that wasn’t necessarily true, he thought bitterly. His _vode_ had people who noticed injuries; if they were struggling. Who had practised skills with them to help them improve, help them become Mando’ade. He remembered once, when he was around thirteen, he had been struck in the forearm particularly hard in a sparring session. It hadn’t felt right (the crack wasn’t audible but he certainly _felt_ it), and he’d gone back to his room in a considerable amount of pain. 

The swelling had been impressive, a purple bruise snaking all the way from his wrist to his elbow and he had spent the entire weekend away from training believing it to be a sprain. He hadn’t had anyone to tell him any better. Or anyone who could tell him where to find a _baar’ur._ It had taken a flash of pain during hand-to-hand sparring, that was so sharp he had thrown up, for any adult to notice the injury. It turned out he had two fractures in his arm. 

“Training wasn’t punishing, just realistic. They made sure we had no illusions about the galaxy, but they weren’t _cruel_ ”

Cara scoffed. “Din, your version of cruel is _severely_ warped.”

 _Cin vhetin._ The point of the training was to be reforged as Mando’ade, to be broken down, and built back up. Like beskar, melted down and reforged into something stronger. 

" _Strong like beskar"_ was a popular phrase with his teachers when they were training them to resist torture. It meant to hold out against all odds, to use every experience to improve. The other one had been _atiniir. Endure._ Often yelled straight in his ear as he struggled against a chokehold. 

"You forget the history of Mandalore. _Aruetise_ hunt Mandalorians in every corner of the galaxy. Does it not make sense to train them to survive?" 

"Sure, but it sounds like they forgot to teach you how to be a functional person along the way - when was the last time you felt an emotion, _Mando?"_

Damn, Cara. Don't hold back.

He stared at the sky. The stars were very clear on this planet. "There's a Mandalorian proverb - _verd ori'shya beskar'gam._ A warrior is more than his armour."

(He’d heard a different proverb more often when he was a teenager: _Ori'buyce, kih'kovid_ \- all helmet, no head.)

"It's about the rest of the creed. Haat, ijaa, haa'it. Truth, honour, vision. We aren't just the armour - but emotions beyond what's useful don't matter. We learn how to control anger, to not use our skill for immoral actions. I learnt to use my anger as fuel for my training."

He never wanted to feel helpless again. 

"Din, I don't think you're understanding here. I'm asking if you ever had a childhood." Cara was staring at the stars too. She was frowning.

 _My childhood was over the moment my parents locked me in a bunker_ was what he wanted to say, but stopped himself. That wasn't what she needed to hear.

"It's not that simple. I don't think many Mandalorians had a _childhood_ in the years before the Purge. We had to fight to preserve our culture." _A culture he didn't get a choice in joining._

"I had to be a child soldier to survive. It's not _cruel_ , or _abusive_ , or whatever it is that you're implying. It is the Way."

Cara sighed. She'd drained her beer, and was starting to shiver in the early evening air. Only streaks of red remained of the sun, painting his beskar in a blood-like tint.

"Whatever you say, Din. But you're not going to train the kid in the same way, right?"

"No. He's too young." _Ik'aad_. "And he's going to the Jedi."

Cara grinned at that, standing up. "Sure. And I'm a bantha." She slapped his shoulder, slightly too hard to be friendly, and started walking into the Crest. "I'm turning in - don't think too hard - or you'll make steam come out the helmet."

Din sighed at her pointedly, amused despite himself. He silently swore to never tell her about the time his circuits had fried and that had actually happened.

She clearly wasn’t keen on Mandalorian parenting.

His upbringing hadn't been so harsh, had it? Mandalorians were warriors first and foremost, and his childhood had reflected that. Though, Cara was right - the Fighting Corps wasn't the pinnacle of emotional intelligence, but he hadn't suffered for it too much. A little teenage angst, of course, like everyone else, a little... _amplified_ , maybe, not to a worrying extent. And the Creed had shaped him, moulded him like beskar - had helped him save the kid. It wasn’t a _bad_ thing.

There was a certain part of him that missed it though. Being soft.

He hadn't had a chance to be anything other than his beskar for a very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Trying to flex my dialogue muscles for once - its my least favourite thing of all time.  
> Big thank you to thetamehistorian, CoffeeQuill and robotboy for dialogue tips, yall are the best.  
> As usual, any comments/feedback/suggestions massively welcome :)
> 
> \- Esher (they/them)
> 
> Mando'a Translations:  
> \- Hu'tuun: coward (worst possible insult)  
> \- Vode: brothers/comrades  
> \- Buir'e: Parents  
> \- Baar'ur: Doctor  
> \- Cin vhetin: the erasing of a person's past when they become Mandalorian  
> \- Aruettise: Outsider, traitor  
> \- Ik'aad: A baby; infant


End file.
